La Dolce Vita With a Side of Nostalgia

Jun 12

This week’s blog post is more travel/life reflections than last week’s intersection between travel and human rights. If you didn’t get a chance to check it out, read about my favorite human rights sites across the world here. And, despite my best desires to not skip a week of writing, the subject matter of this post (a trip with a lot of personal meaning) is why I missed last week. This is me being transparent and also honoring a “pact” I made with myself to be consistent, and giving myself the space and grace to rest and pause. Living the yoga some might say?! Or, trying to - that’s more like it.

Have you ever had the opportunity to go back in time to a place that held a large space (temporarily, emotionally, or both) in your heart? If so, what was it like - the lead up to the actual return and the return itself? Comments are on, so please, drop your shares in here!

From May 25-June 6 I had the opportunity to do just that - go back in time. Nearly two decades have passed since I was last in this place, and I was able to return with a dear friend who also had the same experience in this place - in fact, it’s where we first met and became friends. The two Andreas back at it!

This friend is turning 40 this year (more on that in next week’s blog post), like I’ll do early next year, and the milestone celebration chosen was two weeks in Florence. She and I met on a study abroad program in a small town outside of Florence back in the fall semester of 2006. Nineteen years ago, we were 20/21 years old, respectively, and on the greatest adventure of our lives thus far. Our program was a combination of three US universities who co-owned a villa in this small Tuscan town about 20 minutes train/car ride from Florence city center. All of our classes, meals, and sleeping happened in this sixteenth century villa. Saying it even now sounds like a dream. It was less “Under the Tuscan Sun” and more reality tv set in a stunning location, a little rough around the edges - 30ish (maybe?) US college and a handful of architecture graduate students, a mix of US and Italian professors, and Italian villa staff all living/working in this same gigantic space, centuries’ previously a wealthy person’s home.

As a part of the larger birthday trip, we wanted to return to the town. We had also heard from some of our program mates that the villa was now a hotel or restaurant - some kind of business we could visit as a member of the public. After some good internet research, and my friend’s memory of the name of the street and the villa, we found it! Part of it, the space we used to eat in, is now a restaurant - the sister location to a city- center restaurant. So, we booked ourselves a dinner there for our second to last night of the trip. We’d head to Sesto (the town) by train a little before our reservation and occupy ourselves walking the town and maybe doing aperitivo before the nostalgic meal.

I’ll let our photos do most of the talking - which, like a lot of great nostalgia, probably won’t mean much to you, but meant so much to us. We were eagerly sharing with our waiter the history of why we were there and our time at the villa. He also shared with us that the former cook is now 104 years old and lives just two doors down - his mind is good, his body is aging (well, I mean 104!).

This villa return and town return was everything we wanted - minus getting to actually tour the library, classrooms, and our old bedrooms. (I even walked by the ballet studio I took Cecchetti classes in that semester and it’s still a dance studio!) We sat outside for dinner with a gorgeous view of the space and had a chance to walk through the kitchen inside. We were there for quite a few hours, to see patrons come in to fill the garden space and the sunset. We saw our younger selves in the space, and ultimately we saw where we had been and where we were now in our lives. So much has changed since those study abroad days - including our view of the world. And, the values that we each hold have remained. As my business coach would say, our “north stars” are much the same, with some additions and wisdom gained from the past 19 years.

I’m so grateful to have been able to return to this place that: meant so much to me then, lives fondly in my memories now, and has supplied me with a lifelong friendship.

I’ll leave you with one more memorable impression of this place. The morning I left the villa back in December 2006 to head home to my mother’s house for winter break, which I was admittedly not excited about, my now husband, then villa-mate, and I shared a cab. I was sobbing. I was so sad to say goodbye to this experience and the people, like my friend Andrea. I felt a huge hole in my heart and worried about never seeing many of these folks again.

Call it fate, call it a great romance, or call it chance - he was such a rock of wisdom and assurance. He told me that it would be okay and my friendships that were solid would last past the semester.

You know what? He was right.

Chin chin to, A2; my dear bimba!